


make out of words a cage for your own bird

by sugarybowl



Series: (there are many loves but only one war) [4]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Quests, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Timey-Wimey, Visions, not entirely sure any of it makes sense, seriously this is some wibbly wobbly time travely bs to the max
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 16:56:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18473164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarybowl/pseuds/sugarybowl
Summary: Once upon a time many years from now, the Musicmaker’s grandchildren were lost in the wood.





	make out of words a cage for your own bird

**Author's Note:**

> Listen straight up, this fic is a whole mess. I basically dreamt it, it's super vague, and I don't know if it's any good. But I'd love to have feedback to know if it makes sense to anyone else. <3
> 
> Also this is chuck full of triggery stuff in implied form so PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION.

_ Once upon a time many years from now, the Musicmaker’s grandchildren were lost in the wood. After they put their mother to ground beside her sisters and the Musicmaker and the Musicmaker’s wife, beneath the tree of three fruits that’d watched helplessly over their family as its daughters died too young, the Musicmaker’s grandchildren wandered into the wood and were never seen again.  _

 

-

 

He watched, as it was what he was told to do. He could not remember much outside of what he was told to do: watch until it is time to speak and then speak until it is time to act. Vaguely he remembered fear and devotion and someone else’s shaky smile.

 

A pair of legs too skinny and long for the trousers they were in, sticking out from under a monster of machinery. When an equally thin arm stretched out from under the metal mountain a tool moved graceful and gentle like a leaf dancing in wind until it settled just within reach of the fingers grasping on the ground. The hand and tool disappeared and continued tinkering. He watched, as he was told to, as this happened again and again - tools floating just at grasping distance from the searching hand. 

 

An angry growl came from beside them, from the house that he knew was there but had not turned to look at yet. He turned towards the voice that growled his name while the body under the hunk of useless metal froze. Having never heard his own name spoken in anger he feared who he might see there, but the scene before him had changed. 

 

A boy too young to look so worn and broken sat at the end of an alley, head bent so that his curls made a curtain to hide away his face. He wore bright clothing in eye catching patterns, it all fit him loosely and his thin body looked lost in a larger man’s shirt. Or perhaps it was meant to hang off his shoulder just so. He felt compelled to reach out to him, to ask if he was okay, but the boy looked up and right through him and he knew - it wasn’t time to speak just yet. 

 

He looked up at the stars and then let his head turn, finding himself somewhere else once again. His back felt wet and he could smell the sharp scent of the earth and thought maybe somehow he was home again but then, there was the boy beneath frozen beneath the tractor and broken at the end of the alleyway. He was a man now, still thin but somehow imposing, tall as anything or at least tall in the way he layed. His eyes were made of glass and sadness and his lips were slack and he wasn’t quite breathing until, there were bodies around them screaming for help and thumping against his chest and maybe he took a terrible fall because everyone was screaming about some terrible trip and then -

 

The man who was a boy frozen and broken and very nearly dead is standing high chinned and proud in front of him and he himself is not who he was when he started to observe so maybe then it is time to speak, so he says his name. But that is no good here, so he tries again.

 

-

_ A person or a creature or a thought appeared to them, knowing they feared the blood curse that crept in their veins would come for the sister while the brother watched helpless. A solution was offered to them.  _

 

_ - _

She watched, as it was what she was told to do.  She watched the boy’s hands shake as he poured white pebble after white pebble onto his palm and then she watched as he waited and cried silently to himself. She watched as his body shook and as people rushed and shouted and ran and found she could not run after them. She turned to look out the window, but the light of a day that had not been there blinded her.

 

The scene that unfolded before her was pale. White were the walls and the beds and the faces, but not the boy hiding himself behind the pages of a book. The book, it shone with a light outside of itself, the colors of the cover radiating and warming the boy’s face. She moved closer to read what it said but instead she was met with scared brown eyes that could not see her and then the eyes turned cold.

 

She lay on cool floors and looked up at the ceiling, it was pale as the walls of that room had just been. But around her there was more red than white, red on the tiles and in the soft puffs of carpet turned red, and red on the tub and the arms of the boy which were pale and pale like the whites of his eyes except where they were marked with red like the screams and -

 

The boy is warm and alive and there is nothing that is pale except the man he wraps his arms around. And she is somewhere and she is someone but who she is she could not say, she can only say that the boy who tried and tried and tried again to die with empty eyes and heartbreak was living and breathing with eyes determined, full of fascination and warmth and she is someone else pretending to be someone else pretending - a nesting doll of lies to entertain her.

-

_ “You live your lives,” the witch or god or passing fay said, “at the loose ends of a paradox. The curse that kills your women seeks to end a line that should have never begun. Time itself loathes you and nothing can save you from it - except if you repay the love that brings you here today. One day, long ago, many years from now - a pair stumbled into a wood.” _

 

“I was a student at Brakebills,” he tells his sister.

 

“I was a fairy changeling,” she tells her brother.

 

“They had awful lives and then -”

 

“And we had lovely lives and then -”

 

The woman who proposed this solution to them stood just so, waiting.

 

“I will sacrifice,” she said, “I will save them and myself.”

 

“I will sacrifice,” he said, “I will follow her anywhere.”

 

The woman nodded and then they were, themselves and who they never were in front of impossible children like them.

 

The thing that wore their great-grandfather’s body tilted his head, “How curious. Sister, they are twins as well.”

 

“How curious,” she echoed, “it seems they’ve come for a trade.”

-

 

_ Once upon a time many years from now, the Musicmaker’s grandchildren were lost in the wood. A tree of three fruits stood quietly.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Please share with me what you made of this hot mess.


End file.
